Woman Says She Was Kicked Out of Public Pool for Wearing One-Piece Swimsuit

Is it too much to ask that women are no longer shamed for their bodies, clothes, and appearances in general? For now, apparently it is.

A normal one-piece swimsuit is the cause of the latest instance of totally uncalled-for body-shaming to go viral. The incident occurred on Tuesday in Knoxville, Tennessee, where Tori Jenkins and her boyfriend Tyler Newman decided to beat the heat by taking a dip in Jenkins's apartment complex's swimming pool, according to a post on Newman's Facebook page. Within a few minutes of arriving at the pool, however, the pair were asked to leave due to Jenkins's "inappropriate" swimsuit.

As Newman described in his post, "Today my fiancée was faced with either changing her bathing suit, covering up with shorts, or leaving the pool that we paid a $300 fee to maintain on top of a monthly rent of nearly $1000 (not including utilities and wifi). Tori was accused of wearing a 'thong bathing suit' and told there were complaints about the way she was dressed after roughly 3 minutes tops, of us arriving there." As evidenced by the photos Newman included, Jenkins's one-piece swimsuit was definitely not a thong. He described how Jenkins went to the office of a leasing consultant for the complex to discuss the matter. "In the office, the leasing consultant (who, for now, I will not name) insisted upon letting Tori take her picture to show 'how inappropriate' her bathing suit was, and instructed her to look into a mirror at her own body." Newman continued. "She was told that her body, because it's built more curvy than others is 'too inappropriate' for children to be around. She was told 'there are a lot of teenage boys in this complex, and you don't need to excite them.'"

Newman perfectly summed up just how ridiculously awful this situation and others like it are: "Today my fiancée was told that she is less important than how men feel around her. That Tori is less important than a man's urges to be sexual towards her. I think she's the most beautiful woman in the world, but I also respect her. I would never make her or any other woman feel less than what she's worth because of her outfit or her looks. This is how rape culture continues to grow."

A few days later, Jenkins addressed the incident on her own Facebook page, writing, "I'd just like to say on my own behalf that I'm really amazed by all of the overwhelming support I've received. Thank you all, you really don't know how much it means to me. It hasn't even been that long since it happened but I can tell you that I've felt really shitty about myself since. Being distracted by friends and work and your wonderful comments have made this process a whole lot easier."

However, Jenkins noted that despite all the positive comments and support she has received, she has also continued to be body-shamed and criticized on Newman's post. In response to this negativity, she wrote, "The suit may look small but that's also after I binge cried and ate pizza. When you feel that shitty about yourself do you really think the first pose that comes to mind is happy? That I wanna have good posture and look skinny? I didn't care. And frankly I still don't care if I looked 'too big' for the suit." Jenkins also shared that Newman had originally posted a front-facing picture of her, but, "I took it down after reading so many hateful comments about my stomach and so many intensely explicit sexual comments. That is the whole issue."

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She added, "The ENTIRE POINT of this post is that no man or woman has the right to make me feel uncomfortable in my own skin. No right to police me or any other human."

Jenkins and Newman are 100 percent right. Everybody deserves to feel safe and free from judgment, whether they're at a public pool, shopping mall, gym, or anywhere else in the world. Nobody has the right to make unsolicited comments about anybody else's appearance and, hopefully, posts like Jenkins's and Newman's will help people understand that body-shaming is never, ever OK.